Apparently, there is a market for short distinctive sounds, less than a second long, which can be used to inform you that some moment of great moment has passed. It must be a market, because my laptop appears to acquire new ones on a regular basis. Maybe it operates a double life as a trader in honk futures.
It constantly emits sound, whether I am sitting in front of it or not. Chimes, chords, marimbas, barks, boings, crickets, quacks, strums, klaxons, pings, whistles, bells – on particularly bad occasions it sounds like a perambulating one-man-band. Honk, clash, honk, clash, paaarp! I’ve considered taking it out busking.
The reason for some of these alerts I understand – new mail, for example, or the imminence of an important meeting. Fresh tweets. The various online appearances of good friends and other people I hate.
The rest? I have no fucking clue. F’rinstance, it regularly used to make a troubled quack (somewhat like a quizzical but mildly alarmed mallard) every day at 10:49am. Every day. At 10:49am. What possible recurring event could take place at such a time, and why does it merit the attention grabbing desire of a worried duck?
I eventually found this one, deep in the preferences of some unremembered third-rate download manager was an ‘alert when checking for update’ checkbox. What lunatic thinks it is important to inform me when it is *checking* for upgrades, and that the default setting should be ‘on’?
I’ve given up trying to find them anymore. I just treat the machine like an embarrasing farting grandmother. If it whistles like R2-D2 while I’m hot-chocolate-desking in Le Pain Quotidien, I just fend off the suprised looks with an uncomfortable shrug. And blame the AIBO.
Related to, but not to be confused with #6: Uncomfortable Alerts.
Adium constantly blasts out Tokyo Train Station alerts whenever someone comes online, goes offline, makes a cup of tea or moves a quarter inch in their chair. This annoyed me at first, but seeing as I couldn’t be arsed to switch it off and have now become accustomed to it, now it only affects everyone else.
I want to steal “fresh tweets” for something. Sounds like a great tagline – especially for the blog convo we were just chatting about. Of course, “fresh” would have a different meaning. ;)
As a registered member of the Why The fuck society Id like to congratulate you on these wonderful series of posts on the troublesome delivery of distractions. Please do keep it up, but dont let it become a distraction!
Spot on! Even my monitor beeps – or it did right up until the moment I ripped the beeper thing out of it.
I have to confess that I switched off the sound on my ‘puter when it last booted up, and I haven’t switched it back on since. Reduces the quality of youtube viewing a bit, but only a little compared with the increased productivity of not being beeped to death.